Palestinian minister accuses Syrian rebels of targeting refugee camps

Visiting Palestinian Labor Minister Ahmad Majdalani said here Tuesday that Syrian rebels have targeted Palestinian camps in the unrest-torn country, inflicting heavy losses upon the Palestinians and their properties. Speaking at a press conference in the capital Damascus, Majdalani said the Palestinians have constantly stressed that they are not a party in the Syrian crisis. The minister described the seizing of al-Yarmouk camp in Damascus by the armed groups as a "war crime and a crime against humanity." He referred to the shooting which targeted a humanitarian aid convoy outside the camp a day earlier, stressing that the source of fire on the convoy came from an area under the rebels' control. The Palestinian minister highlighted that his ministry agreed with the Syrian Ministry of Social Affairs on measures to get relief aid into the camp and help the people who want to leave that troubled area. "We won't allow using the residents of al-Yarmouk camp as human shields for the gunmen," Majdalani stressed, adding that otherwise "the armed groups must understand that their problem would then be with the entire Palestinian people and not only with the Syrian state." The Syrian forces have besieged for months al-Yarmouk camp, the main residential area for Palestinian refugees in Syria, blocking its food and medical supplies in a bid to force the rebels out. People in the camp find themselves caught in the middle of the fighting and victimized by the violence. They urged the Jihadist groups to leave their camp in order for the government troops to break the siege and allow relief aid in. The Syrian officials accused the rebels inside the camp of hindering efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the afflicted people inside that area. Khaled Abdul-Majid of the Damascus-based Palestinian Popular Struggle Front told Xinhua recently that a total of 30 Palestinians died in the past three months as a result of hunger and illness at the camp. Since violence started creeping toward the camp in early 2013, many of its residents, both Syrians and Palestinians, have fled their homes. Some Damascus-based Palestinian factions put forward many initiatives recently that aim to disassociate the camp from the Syrian conflict, but they were all rendered flat. Syria's 500,000 Palestinian refugees have tried to keep a distance from the violence that takes place in nearby areas, but Syria's civil conflict did not spare them.